So you think the oriental people, caucasian people, and black people that haven't mated outside of their race for numerous generations are not the same species???

I said, would it happen eventually, and if so how many generations WOULD it take, not how many it DID take. I'm not thick, else we wouldn't be able to have mixed race relationships with children that are half and half regarding skin colour etc.

(Original post by Nix-j-c)
I said, would it happen eventually, and if so how many generations WOULD it take, not how many it DID take. I'm not thick, else we wouldn't be able to have mixed race relationships with children that are half and half regarding skin colour etc.

It's not a linear process so how long it would take would depend on the selection pressures they have. I think humans evolved to the point where their ability to adapt to new environments was so great that there are very few selection pressures. So even if some human populations were completely isolated from each other, there would be very little "reason" for them to evolve. That means it would take a long time before the different populations became so different they were unable to breed with each other.

(Original post by Psyk)
It's not a linear process so how long it would take would depend on the selection pressures they have. I think humans evolved to the point where their ability to adapt to new environments was so great that there are very few selection pressures. So even if some human populations were completely isolated from each other, there would be very little "reason" for them to evolve. That means it would take a long time before the different populations became so different they were unable to breed with each other.

I know there's little reason for us to continue evolving in the modern world with technology and medicine but think how much different the various races look.

Also noone has mentioned anything about other breeds of animals. Are breeds of animals varied in the same way as different races of people or less, or more?

(Original post by Nix-j-c)
I know there's little reason for us to continue evolving in the modern world with technology and medicine but think how much different the various races look.

Also noone has mentioned anything about other breeds of animals. Are breeds of animals varied in the same way as different races of people or less, or more?

I would say some animals are way more varied than humans. The difference between races of humans are minimal really. They're mostly quite superficial differences. All races are pretty much the same size and shape. We're good at picking up the differences, even if you exclude the obvious differences in skin colour, but if you think about it there aren't really that many differences.

Compare that to dogs. A great dane and a chihuahua look completely different. I think if you showed one of each to someone who didn't know what a dog was, they'd probably think they were completely different animals. But they're the same species.

Of course with animals different breeds exist because of humans. They didn't evolve through natural selection, they were genetically engineered by humans using artificial selection.

(Original post by Psyk)
I would say some animals are way more varied than humans. The difference between races of humans are minimal really. They're mostly quite superficial differences. All races are pretty much the same size and shape. We're good at picking up the differences, even if you exclude the obvious differences in skin colour, but if you think about it there aren't really that many differences.

Compare that to dogs. A great dane and a chihuahua look completely different. I think if you showed one of each to someone who didn't know what a dog was, they'd probably think they were completely different animals. But they're the same species.

Of course with animals different breeds exist because of humans. They didn't evolve through natural selection, they were genetically engineered by humans using artificial selection.

I'm with the science which rejects the biological 'race' concept as being applicable to humans - we're all one 'race' (variation, even a lot of it, doesn't make the taxanomic concept of 'race' viable).

Anyway, AFAIK, the group of humans closest to the idea of genetic 'difference' are Aboriginal Australians, having lived in isolation from the rest of humanity for somewhere between 40,000 and 60,000 years until very recently, yet there's no difficulty in these people having healthy and fertile offspring with non-Aboriginals.

(Original post by Oswy)
I'm with the science which rejects the biological 'race' concept as being applicable to humans - we're all one 'race' (variation, even a lot of it, doesn't make the taxanomic concept of 'race' viable).

Then you'll just have to come up with a new term to replace the word "race" in describing those variations. It seems a bit pointless.

(Original post by cttp_ngaf)
Then you'll just have to come up with a new term to replace the word "race" in describing those variations. It seems a bit pointless.

The problem with 'race' is that is tends to categorise humans into a small number of separating 'boxes', effectively shoe-horning them for the benefit of 'neatness' not because it is scientifically viable. Racial systems usually have three, four or five separations, but there can be more, I'm sure I've come across references to racial systems which had up to 64 different 'races'. This variation in how many races there can 'be' alone illustrates that the 'human races' idea is problematic. The evidence, especially the recent genetic evidence, shows that human variation is overwhelmingly clinal (that is human populations are different by graduating degrees - 'Europeans' don't suddenly 'become' 'Chinamen' as you travel across Eurasia for example). Moreover, there's good evidence to suggest that there is lots of variation within populations which are traditionally grouped as a 'race', sub-Saharan Africans being the most obvious example. Why don't racial systems regard West Africans and East Africans as different 'races' for example? They're certainly different in all kinds of observable physiological ways, depending, of course, on which characteristics you deem important for your classification system.

There's something of a debate been going on in the relevant fields for some time; old and well-established ideas can be hard to dislodge in science. Some scholars like 'race' as a taxanomic system, others regard it as being at odds with the empirical evidence and thus, ultimately, something of a misleading invention, not accurate nor a discovery. Obviously you can take your side, but I happen to think the nay-sayers have the most convincing arguments.

(Original post by Oswy)
Not really. The problem with 'race' is that is tends to categorise humans into a small number of separating 'boxes', effectively shoe-horning them for the benefit of 'neatness' not because it is scientifically viable.

Racial systems usually have three, four or five separations, but there can be more, I'm sure I've come across references to racial systems which had upt o 64 different 'races'. This variation in how many races there can 'be' alone illustrates that the 'human races' idea is problematic.

We can choose to acknowledge anything from 1 group of ~7 billion members to ~7 billion groups of 1 member, as you zoom from one extreme to the other different sized groups come into focus. It all depends on the purpose for which we need to categorise people.
I don't see that to be a problem, if anything it's just an easily-resolved semantic issue, if someone in a conversation wanted to use the term "race" to mean one of five large groups, and another considered there were 50 "races", then so long as they agree what they each mean then it's no problem.

The evidence, especially the recent genetic evidence

sounds complicated

shows that human variation is overwhelmingly clinal

Overwhelmingly so, eh?

Moreover, there's good evidence to suggest that there is lots of variation within populations which are traditionally grouped as a 'race', sub-Saharan Africans being the most obvious example.

Without a doubt, I don't think anyone believes all members of a "race" (however they define that) to be without variance.

thus, ultimately, something of an invention, not a discovery.

All forms of categorisation are inventions, all of our taxonomic traditions are essentially arbitrary if you look at them from the point of view of "an outsider" - everything can be reduced or expanded into arbitrary degrees of similarity or difference to fit the intended purpose.

I don't at all think that the "Races scientifically don't exist" kind of thing has any merit, since it's entirely down to the whims and social pressures of the day as to how we might prefer to order and re-order different groups of people (or whatever else).

What one could suggest is that whatever current (or past) view of racial differences is undesirable from a sociopolitical point of view (which is of course the driving force behind attempts to revise/remove popular considerations of race).

(Original post by Oswy)
Why don't racial systems regard West Africans and East Africans as different 'races' for example? They're certainly different in all kinds of observable physiological ways, depending, of course, on which characteristics you deem important for your classification system.

Which racial systems? Like you said, there is no universally (or even majorly) accepted "racial system", so to which, or whose, racial systems do you refer?

Personally I've always been aware of West Africans and East Africans as being noted and regarded as worthy of distinction from each other, especially in their respective athletic predispositions. Whether we want to call them different races or not, I don't particularly care.

Technically I doubt it. There is no race in the human race, just different genetics differences that are merley adaptation to our surroundings, that also can start to change within a relatively short amount of time (300 generations or so)

While scientists use the concept of race to make practical distinctions among fuzzy sets of traits, the scientific community feels that the idea of race is often used by the general public in a naive or simplistic way, erroneously designating wholly discrete types of individuals. Among humans, race has no taxonomic significance—all people belong to the same hominid subspecies, Homo sapiens sapiens. Regardless of the extent to which race exists, the word "race" is problematic and may carry negative connotations. Social conceptions and groupings of races vary over time, involving folk taxonomies that define essential types of individuals based on perceived sets of traits. Scientists consider biological essentialism obsolete, and generally discourage racial explanations for collective differentiation in both physical and behavioral traits.

(Original post by Psyk)
I would say some animals are way more varied than humans. The difference between races of humans are minimal really. They're mostly quite superficial differences. All races are pretty much the same size and shape. We're good at picking up the differences, even if you exclude the obvious differences in skin colour, but if you think about it there aren't really that many differences.

Compare that to dogs. A great dane and a chihuahua look completely different. I think if you showed one of each to someone who didn't know what a dog was, they'd probably think they were completely different animals. But they're the same species.

Of course with animals different breeds exist because of humans. They didn't evolve through natural selection, they were genetically engineered by humans using artificial selection.

It could happen at any time by pure chance. Probably would happen on an undiscovered island or in the remote rainforest.

The definition of a species is that it can't create fertile offspring with members of another species.

You might say that the pigmy indian tribes are most likely to form their own species since they are so small that they are the most unlikely to breed with people of usual human stature and so in the long run if they only bread with themselves they might become unable to breed with usual human beings.

For all we know it might already have happened! You would have to try to breed with every un-contacted tribe in the world just to check you can produce fertile offspring with them! (unlikely though)

(Original post by Nix-j-c)
I know there's little reason for us to continue evolving in the modern world with technology and medicine but think how much different the various races look.

There's not even a 1% difference between the human 'races' as we know them so it doesn't matter how different we look. I mean, we share about 98% of our DNA with rats but you could never guess it solely by looking at the two, could you? We're all just variations of the same concept. The closest thing we have to humans who are not quite humans are the Melanesians who have 4-7% difference from the average H. sapiens sapiens. But that's only because one of their ancestors is of a different species and not due to isolationist selection pressure. It might have been possible when there only 30,000 humans on Earth but now there's 7 billion of us, you would be better off banking on an insane mutation in a handful of humans to produce a new breed.